Thousands of refugee children who fled war in Syria and Afghanistan face life without education from June because of a cash crisis in the overcrowded camps of the Greek islands, according to a new report.
Some 42,000 refugees are currently on the islands of the Aegean Sea but the twin threats from coronavirus and delays over education funding threaten the futures of vulnerable children in the camps.
Money for existing education programmes will run out in June and major donors are yet to agree an extension, according to global children’s charity Theirworld.
Theirworld says that €20 million ($21.9m) is needed for the next two years for schooling of the estimated 6,000 school-age refugee children on the islands. It said fewer than a third of the children were receiving any schooling by late 2019.
“Even if only for a few hours a day, these classes offer a stark contrast to their existence in overcrowded camps blighted by poor diet, sanitation, high tension and sometimes violence,” said its president, Justin van Fleet.
The charity urged international donors to fulfil a pledge made in 2016 to educate every Syrian refugee child.
The UN has called on donors to give $1.5 million to extend remote learning to refugee children whose education has almost entirely been stopped by the Covid-19 outbreak and their traumatic journeys to Europe.
“For children who have been displaced because of conflict or persecution entering school restores their hope and dignity,” said Philippe Leclerc, the representative of UNHCR, the UN Refugee agency in Greece.
Many on the islands of Lesbos, Kos, Samos and Chios had gone without schooling for a year after fleeing their homelands.
The highest number of refugees are at the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos that was built for 3,000 people but is now home to nearly 20,000.
An NGO education centre on the island was also destroyed in fire last month amid rising tensions between the local population and migrants.
Providing education with little funding has been made more difficult by the pandemic in the overcrowded camps where conditions are ripe for the disease to spread.
A new mother living in a camp near Athens became the first refugee from a Greek refugee centre to test positive for Covid-19 this month.
The situation on the Greek islands is part of a bigger problem with some 1.5 million refugee children, most who fled the Syrian war, are out of school in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, said the charity.
“It’s important to help children on the islands during Covid-19 with remote learning, because their situation is so difficult, but we mustn’t stint on the effort to provide learning and proper school places when the crisis begins to ease,” said the charity’s chair, Sarah Brown, a global health and education campaigner.
“We know for sure that the children and their families want them to resume learning. We hear all the time that education is so important to them.”
Source: Syriahr
